On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:37:10 -0500, John Richard Moser<nigelenki@comcast.net> wrote:> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----> Hash: SHA1> > > Linus Torvalds wrote:> >> > On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, John Richard Moser wrote:> >> >>It's kind of like locking your front door, or your back door. If one is> >>locked and the other other is still wide open, then you might as well> >>not even have doors. If you lock both, then you (finally) create a> >>problem for an intruder.> >>> >>That is to say, patch A will apply and work without B; patch B will> >>apply and work without patch A; but there's no real gain from using> >>either without the other.> >> >> > Sure there is. There's the gain that if you lock the front door but not> > the back door, somebody who goes door-to-door, opportunistically knocking> > on them and testing them, _will_ be discouraged by locking the front door.> >> > In the real world yes. On the computer, the front and back doors are> half-consumed by a short-path wormhole that places them right next to> eachother, so not really. :)>

Then one might argue that doing any security patches is meaninglessbecause, as with bugs, there will always be some other hole notcovered by both A and B so why bother?